Posts Tagged ‘assignment’

I’m no Elvis fan but I know lots of people have a very soft spot for The King and his music. For many, the anniversary of his death today is a significant one so I thought I’d show a few images that I made at an Elvis convention some years ago in Blackpool as a mini tribute. Once upon a time I was shooting a good deal on a rather lovely 5×4 Horseman Camera with Polaroid Type 55 (pos/neg) instant film. Working that way allowed me to shoot rather formal – but unexpectedly beautiful images that I could peel apart and then give to the subject (whilst shoving the negative in a big tank of fixer). It was a lovely way to work but my back never forgave me for the weight of kit I had to lug about. Anyway, here’s a triptych of some of the work…

Whilst looking through my archive yesterday for something completely different, I happened to chance upon this image that I think, whichever way you voted in the EU Referendum, might sum up today’s triggering of Article 50 by the British government. It was from an assignment for the Times Magazine on David Miliband in 2008. I’d travelled with him to Kiev, Brussels and errr… Birmingham as well as shooting a portrait at his home in London. This was taken after a rather laborious interview in the European Parliament’s TV studio. Everyone else had cleared off and just the dying buzz of the tv feed remained in the air. Clearly weary, he held his face in his hands as the lights started to dim. It’s never been published before and I’d forgotten all about it but I thought today it might have some … resonance.

David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for South Shields, Tyne and Wear after a live broadcast with a TV channel in the European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium

Amateur Photographer Magazine recently asked me what image that I’ve made, had had a profound effect on me. I told them about photographing a deeply disturbed boy forced to commit atrocities by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Here’s the full piece …

Yesterday, I was delighted to learn that Prince Charles and family – surely Britian’s most celebrated benefit claimants – were visiting his very own bejewelled architectural confusion, Poundbury. Three years ago, I visited the same town – a kind of Daily Mail wet dream of Middle England, to write about it for a special edition of the German magazine, Brand Eins. I found the place mostly deserted with a chill wind whipping through a stage set of architectural pastiche and folly. Charles, a fan of the work of Albert Speer, has overseen the creation of a fantasy land: a reimagining (from a lonely castle window) of a ‘former’ but entirely fictional Britain well suited to the Brexit generation (British homes for British people…) – an airbrushed past of classical architectural tropes masquerading uncomfortably as an (upmarket) housing estate.

You can read the piece called ‘The strange Death of the British Utopia – or how Britain live in her own past’ here (warning: it’s long…).

but I leave you with an image of a deserted street and a Neo Classical … errr bus shelter.

A traditionally styled shelter in Poundbury. Poundbury on Duchy of Cornwall land is Prince Charles’ attempt to create an urban extension to Dorchester famed for its pastiche of traditional architecture. Dorset, UK

So goodbye to the Independent on Sunday Magazine… In the late 1990s/early 2000s, I had a few lovely covers – thanks to the wonderful picture editing duo of Susan Glen and Victoria Lukens… my favourite I think however remains this one (apologies for the terrible scan) that I made with the brilliant Peter Popham about Arundhati Roy‘s Kerala. A marvellous assignment and great memories.

There was some inevitability about it of course but after thirty years, The Independent Newspaper has decided to close the print edition(s) and move online. In the late 1990s and early 2000s I worked on quite a few stories for the excellent Sunday Magazine picture desk that was Victoria Lukens and Susan Glen.

Susan, now a respected photography consultant is featuring some of the Independent’s work on her site and has just published my story about the mental landscape of war amongst child soldiers in Africa, The Lord of the Flies

I was delighted – and rather shocked – that one of my images from South India was named by the Washington Post yesterday as one of twelve of the 20th century’s most important photographs… I’m not sure that’s true at all but I do seem to be in very august company and that’s very nice.

The piece was written to coincide with the opening night (last night) of The Delhi Photo Festival‘s exhibition of Time Magazine’s old South Asia picture editor, Deepak Puri’s personal collection of photojournalism. He’s generously donated that to the Museum of Art & Photography in Bangalore.
Anyway click on the image below to be taken to the piece –